MOBILE librarian Zillah Ní Loideoin has been travelling the highways and byways of West Cork for the past 19 years.
Set up in Cork as a pilot, 63 years on West Cork membership is a healthy 1,817 with issues for last year (including renewals) coming in at an impressive 39,005.
The total stock on board, in storage and on loan is almost 11,000.
The mobile visits schools and playschools in the morning and villages, and nursing homes and day care centres in the afternoon.
With driver Sean Crowley at the wheel they travel approximately 600km each week from their base in Dunmanway.
‘When I first started we had one stop down a really narrow road near Caheragh. The member would leave their books in a paint bucket, we’d take them and swap them over with a new lot,’ Zillah recalls.
Denis Murphy recalls their ‘phantom borrowers’who would have their books deposited at the end of their laneways.
‘Once we were a bit late and the container of books – a load of Mills & Boon – were missing. We could only presume they were mistaken for rubbish and were taken by the bin lorry!’
Zillah gets to know members’ tastes well: ‘We’ll know if someone has been ill or passes away, and we really care about them.’
(Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme).
